Hunger Facts

One of the primary symptoms of poverty in children around the world is hunger. The facts about hunger clearly show its relationship to other symptoms of poverty such as malnutrition, low birth rate and poor health. In fact, the hunger facts are just a small glimpse into the destruction that poverty causes.

Each year, millions of children die from malnutrition. This is one of the most sobering facts about hunger – it steals life from the most innocent and vulnerable … children. Hunger is preventable, but it requires knowledge and action.

Thanks to Compassion’s intervention, for more than a million children around the world, the facts about hunger are no longer an issue. Through Compassion’s sponsorship program, they receive proper nutrition and adequate health care.

When you sponsor a child in Compassion’s program, you eliminate one of the most pervasive symptoms of poverty – hunger. As a sponsor you can literally change the facts about hunger for a child in need. Why not get started today?

Hunger Facts

Get the facts about hunger and how it affects children and their families.

Hunger is the world’s #1 health risk. It kills more people than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

One in seven people in the world will go to bed hungry tonight.

Over 300 million children go to bed hungry every day.

Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes. That's one child every five seconds.

Undernutrition is a factor in one third of all under-5 child deaths.

One out of four children - roughly 146 million - in developing countries is underweight.

In Africa and Asia, stunting rates are particularly high, at 40 percent and 36 percent respectively.

More than 90 percent of the developing world’s stunted children live in Africa and Asia.

Exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life could have the single largest impact on child survival, with the potential to prevent 1.4 million under-five deaths.

On average about 35 percent of infants 0 to 6 months old are exclusively breastfed.

Every infant and child has the right to good nutrition according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Undernutrition is associated with 35 percent of the disease burden in children under five.

Globally, 30 percent (or 186 million) of children under five are estimated to be stunted and 18 percent (or 115 million) have low weight-for-height, mostly as a consequence of poor feeding and repeated infections, while 43 million are overweight.

925 million people do not have enough to eat. 98 percent of them live in developing countries.

There are more hungry people in the world than the combined populations of USA, Canada and the European Union.

Asia and the Pacific region is home to over half the world’s population and nearly two thirds of the world’s hungry people.

Women make up a little over half of the world's population, but they account for over 60 percent of the world’s hungry.

65 percent of the world's hungry live in only seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.

The World Bank estimates that the spike in global food prices in 2008, followed by the global economic recession in 2009 and 2010 has pushed between 100-150 million people into poverty.